


Mr. and Mrs. Hood

by myadamantiumheart



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: AU, Big Bang Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myadamantiumheart/pseuds/myadamantiumheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Word on the street is, Mama Gotham’s got a new baby girl, kicking ass and dispensing sass in a fabulous purple outfit. Jason Todd is intrigued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. and Mrs. Hood

**Prologue**

Word on the street is, Mama Gotham’s got a new baby girl. Purple and bright comebacks, high kicking her way around town with a right hook that’ll knock a full grown meta on their ass. She’s got a thigh band and a cowl, a cape and an attitude, and Jason knows as soon as he sees her handiwork- Bruce isn’t gonna be happy about this one. He’s going to want to shove Baby in the corner, put her back in her suburban box, and pack her away as a hopeless case that he’s only saving from a coffin by suppressing.

But what the hell- Jason needs an extra right about now, his main case dogging his tails  a little too close for comfort these days. He needs a partner; he needs a woman who can hold her own. He needs another pawn to strap himself to so he can worry a little less about throwing himself into the fray and lying his ass off to stay alive.

And really- if Jason didn’t do anything that Bruce disapproved of, he probably would have stayed dead. The Boss’s disapproving glare isn’t enough to quell his confidence anymore, and he can’t get benched by Daddy any more than Daddy can get benched by him. The girl’s got exactly the right kind of style for this situation, a white tie dress in a black tie crowd, and Jason’s not letting Bruce’s dour, upturned nose stop him from fraternizing with the ‘amateurs’.

So he finds her home address, picks out his most threatening ensemble, and makes sure there’s enough ice for his face in the fridge in case she gets in a lucky shot with that deadly right arm of hers.

The Red Hood’s going a-courting tonight.

—

There’s a hush that falls over the city, sometimes, strange weather that blows unexpected heat through the corridors of a vengeful god’s diorama. It seems tiny, from the rooftops, settling mugginess in between little toy buildings that hold little toy people, going about their lives, unaware that something dangerous is watching them. They are crushed, every day, their lives boiling down to a little obituary in the little newspaper, or maybe, if they’re rich enough, a bigger obituary in the main newspapers and a lot of people pretending they knew them well enough to receive part of their fortune. In sickness or health, their arbitrary endings litter the city at night, and Jason’s been party to more than a few of them, whether he was too late to stop them or it was his own finger pulling the trigger.

The world spins ever, ever on, Jason thinks to himself as he swings between the buildings, crumbling with East coast bourgeois charm, the gargoyles of yesteryear partially eaten away by pollution-laden rain. The buildings haven’t changed much, since he’s been back- they didn’t change while he was away, either. They’ll fall down, sure, one of these days; maybe it’ll be partially Jason’s fault, too. A criminal he didn’t catch quickly enough, one that slipped by the Bat, or a Justice League day trip to help their most stubborn member save the day. The buildings welcomed him back like no one else in the whole damn city did, familiar stone, a little more cracked than before perhaps, and on some of his favorite rooftops, the scratchy scrawl of his younger self still marks the wings of gargoyles. They’ll be here even when he’s gone (again), and it’s almost comforting and almost frightening to realize that they’ll be here even when all the other fucked up family members of Gotham’s vigilante family are gone too. He tries not to think of who will pick up the pieces then, buries it in anger, and thinks about how maybe one of the other wayward sons will adopt or something, and carry on the legacy.

Maybe one day he’ll be standing on the top of this rooftop, right here, in this very spot, and he’ll be watching a tiny kid he calls his own, in green short-shorts and a garish red tunic, fling himself (herself?) recklessly from the heights that still thrill the pit of his stomach.

The city murmurs through, the gray hands of Gotham reaching up and closing nearly-tangible, clammy fingers around his ankles and his trachea, and he drops down onto the lower buildings before he can drown too much in the quagmire of introspection. He has a possible partner to interview, and he’s not getting any farther away from these coming days, when he’ll need one the most. (And he really, really doesn’t want to have to ask the new kid to help him out, however sickeningly cute it is that Dickie seems to be warming up to him and brothering him, every bit the do-over from Jason’s half-baked tenure.)

It’s not hard to find her apartment building, riding his favorite bike and swinging from Mama Gotham’s stately steeples, and it’s even easier to climb right up into her bedroom window- it might have been more difficult if it had been, say, her childhood home, but Stephanie Brown left the nest two and half months ago when she’d started her first semester at Gotham U. The crappy apartment has two other tenants, both of whom are out on the Friday night wave that rolls through the clubs every week. Stephanie, though, is sitting at her kitchen table, eating waffles and studying for a history test. He stifles a chuckle, leans against the doorway, and watches her for a minute. (It’s in his nature, that- the creepy, intense staring thing, where he tries to take in all the possible details. What can he say- he lived with the master stalker. He picked up a few bad habits along the way, no matter how hard Alfred tried to keep it from happening.)

“You always open your doors for strange men when you’re home alone, princess?” He gets a syrup bottle flung (surprisingly accurately) at him for his troubles. Lazarus pit reflexes though- he catches it, and Jason laughs through the cherry red finish of his helmet at the stubborn look on the girl’s face as the eighteen year old hops up and slides into a defensive stance.

“If the Red Hood was gonna kill me, I don’t think a door would have stopped him. And you came in through the window, dipshit,” she says, jitters clearly crawling up the walls of her stomach. She’s got that guilty look on her face- like she knows he’s here to tell her to knock it off or something. Intimidate her out of the game. Jason’s not the Bat, though- he’s not quite the level of buzzkill that visit would entail. “And another thing- I’m definitely not a princess.”

“Really? Your entire uniform is a garish shade of purple, you’ve got the body of a cheerleader, and your whole blonde hair-blue eyes-high schooler thing really doesn’t dissuade me in the least. Besides which, I’ve seen your bedroom.” Jason leans back against the cabinets, looking her up and down deliberately slowly. “Princess.”

“First of all- creepy. I have no idea how old you are, but you shouldn’t be looking into eighteen year old girl’s bedrooms. Second of all- not a highschooler, and if you’re who you say you are, you know that already. Third of all- most high school princess cheerleaders don’t have illegitimate kids and then decide to take up crime fighting as a nightly activity after giving up said kid for adoption. It would detract time from all the football players they’re blowing. And everyone knows they only do it up the ass so that their promise rings aren’t a lie, so I don’t see pregnancy happening. But I digress- I’m not a princess and I never will be. I’m more of a… “ she trailed off, looking at him with glittering eyes and a little hint of fuck you in her wary smile. “I’m more of a Superman.”

Jason laughs- he can’t help himself. It was clearly a mistake though, seeing as her face got stormy the moment he did, her fist clenching tight against her thigh.

“If you’re here to tell me to quit, you might as well get on with it, Mr. Macho,” she snapped. “I’d rather not debate my social standing with a criminal. If I wanted that I could just start visiting daddy dearest.”

“Sweetheart, you got me all wrong,” Jason finally said, looking at her a little closer and stepping away from the cabinets. He sat down across the worn kitchen table, his chair scraping on the linoleum, and he folded his hands over the scraps of graph paper littering his end, smoothing them out absently.

“I’m not here to tell you to quit. I’m here to infuriate you a little and then ask if you’d ever consider making this a thing. You, me, soon-to-be-hurting criminals, good old Gotham, the works. I’m gonna be frank with you, kiddo- the Bat ain’t gonna like what you’re doing. You’re brash, you’re bold, you got spirit, but you’re not what he wants in his city.” He gestured between the two of them, grinning at her again. “You and me, we got a lot in common. He doesn’t want me, he doesn’t want you, but a dude dressed like a bat with a skyscraper up his ass isn’t gonna change my career path at this point. I’m just thinkin’ classical here, kid. Birds of a feather, you know?” His grin morphed a little, a winning smile and a gloved hand reaching out to rest across her now-still one. “Whaddya say- wanna flock together?”

She looked at him like he was crazy, and that made him want to smile even more. You’re not the first, kid, he thought, leaning a little and resisting the urge to needle at her even more. Self control- sometimes, he has it.

—

To his credit- at least he was funny. At least she was laughing as she kicked him out of her apartment. (And what was her life that she was kicking the Red Hood out of her home?)

“Think about it, sugartits!” He yelled up at her as he straddled his motorcycle, saluting her with a rakish grin as he revved the engine.

“I’m not gonna be your sidekick if my sidekick name has to be Sugartits!” she called down to him, leaning against the door frame and flipping him off. He laughed his way down her street, barely audible over the engine, and she shut the door with a little more force than necessary.

And then she slid down the side of her door and breathed a little too fast into her knees for a little while because- oh my god. The Red Hood just tried to recruit her.

She briefly wants to scream out a little bit of Queen- is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

It’s sure as fuck not normal, whatever it is, and it stays with her enough that she can’t even finish her goddamn study session. She punches her pillow a few times and tugs her costume on with a little more force than necessary, and hopes she doesn’t run into Red on patrol, because fuck her if she knows what she’s gonna tell him.

“Sorry, but I’m not interested in a relationship right now?”

He’s not trying to date her.

“Sorry, but I like to be in constant danger with no one to watch my back?”

That’s just a verbalized death wish.

“Sorry, but I’m waiting for Batman to make me his Robin?”

She knows he’ll just laugh in her face for that one.

It’s dawn by the time she gives in and realizes that there’s really no other option than willingly (reluctantly) agreeing to partner up with him. She, Stephanie Brown, is going to agree to a sketchy business proposition given to her at her kitchen table this afternoon by a wanted vigilante she’d never met before in her life.

“Stephanie Brown, you are an idiot,” she says out loud, flopping onto her bed and throwing a purple-clad arm over her eyes with a loud sigh.

And that’s the end of that.

Or, really; the beginning.

**Day One**

He’s not really surprised at all when she shows up at the bar he’s been purposefully frequenting lately, a messenger bag strapped across her torso and a determined look on her face.

(Frequenting it far more than usual was, of course, a tactical move that he’d hoped she’d pick up on.)

“Sit right on down, Miss Stephanie Brown,” he smirks at her through a tequila shot, patting the stool next to him. “So nice of you to join me.”

“I brought you waffles as a symbol of our camaraderie,” she says, completely straight faced, pulling aside the top of her messenger bag to show him the clear tupperware inside that, yes, does contain freshly made, still steamy waffles. “And now you’re stuck with me, even after you realize what a terrible decision you made.” His laughter makes the bartender cringe a little, it’s so loud, and the oafs playing pool in the corner look up at them with slowly growing leers when they realize there’s a woman next to him. He ignores them, and she does too. (He’s still irrationally proud of how much moxie she’s got, and totally rationally disgusted by the fact that he says the word moxie, even internally.)

“I haven’t had waffles since before I bit the big one,” Jason murmurs, rifling through his pockets for a few bills and slapping them on the bar before gesturing to her. “C’mon, let’s get outta here and we can go share our friendship bracelet waffles back at my place.”  

She follows him without hesitation and he wonders if he’s met such a genuine person since the end of his last life. There aren’t a lot of entirely honest women (or men) out there when you’re going to the places he’s been going. And when he returned to Gotham, well. Gotham’s a fox’s den and even her protectors aren’t Pinocchio. The Bat Family isn’t exactly what Jason would term a trust circle. Of course, Stephanie Brown probably isn’t entirely honest either. But she’s a damn sight more than most, and that’s what counts, here and now. He needs someone like that, as much as he hates to admit it.

The Red Hood knows when it’s time to make tactical alliances, and that time is now.

His favorite safe house (aside from the penthouse downtown) is less than ten minutes away from the bar. That might be why it’s his favorite- he chooses not to dwell on that fact too much, and he unlocks the door with an over dramatic flourish just to see her try and keep her straight face. It’s relatively clean, only a few bloodstains he’s not managed to get out of the floors. She puts her waffle tupperware down on the counter next to a few throwing knives, unstraps her messenger bag, and looks at him expectantly. Amateur.

“Well?”

He laughs at her, shutting the door and conspicuously locking it, his hands sliding into his pockets and her shoulders just barely visibly tensing a little at the move. He knows what that shoulder tense feels like, realizing you’re backed into the corner, an animal in a cage, and he wonders; how does this particular species fight back?

“You’re too trusting, Miss Stephanie,” Jason says, sauntering closer, slowly enough that he can actually see the apprehension blossoming in her eyes. “Setting your bag down like that? Bad move. Your weapons, your info, your ride- now it’s not attached to you anymore, and it can be taken twice as fast. Rookie mistake, but I’ll forgive you this time.” He sees her eyes flash just seconds before he’s staring down the business end of a taser, a suspiciously souped up taser that looks so not street legal it’s almost amusing.

“Never assume your opponent’s unarmed,” Stephanie says, shrugging, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “Rookie mistake, but I’ll forgive you this time.”

“How many volts would that have pumped through me, huh?” he backs up a few steps. She doesn’t lower the weapon, but her eyes do defrost a little bit. Her stomach is quivering slightly behind her tank top- he can see it, her nervousness, but she holds remarkably steady in the face of it. He’s finding himself pretty enamored with his choice, if he does say so himself. Guts, raw talent, forethought, innovation- she’s got everything he needs, and it’s clear to see.

“It’s a 120,000, but that wouldn’t have mattered much in the face of the 50 milliamps. I expect you’d find yourself on the floor fairly quickly.”

“Lucky for you, I like dangerous women,” Jason shook his head, grinning slowly. “Put the gun back where it came from and I’ll remember you won’t take my bullshit, huh? We’ve got business to talk.” She laughs at him for that, gesturing towards the table with the taser.

“You sit down first, Mr. Hood,” she grabs the waffle tupperware, her aim never wavering. He sits down at one end and she takes the other, and he’s gratified to find she still plans on sharing the waffles with him because he really hasn’t had homemade waffles since the ones Alfred used to make. (Which, admittedly- not very good. But they were food and Jason has a few food issues, and so Alfred’s pasty waffles were good enough for quite a bit of Jason’s life at the manor.)

“So I can’t bully you, huh?” he says, finally, through a mouthful of waffle. Her hair, shiny and too-wholesome blond, practically reflects light on the inside of the gloomy dining room of his safehouse when she shakes her head.

“I don’t like bullies,” she tells him. “I don’t care where they’re from or what side they’re on.”

“You do like Captain America, though,” Jason cocks his head, catching her fleeting blush. “But aside from that, Little Miss Patriot, business. Business objectives, more like. You agreed to be my cohort, and now I’ve got a little job that I need a willing lady for. You up for it?”

“What’s the job?” she asked, suspicion threading her tone.

“Smart girl,” he chuckles. “It’s pretty simple to start out with, but I have a feeling it’s gonna get complicated, and it could be months before we solve it. There’s a crime family here that operates mainly by the water, the Cavalcante. They’ve been taking over, threatening my territory, and now they’re trafficking children. I do what I can as the ‘Hood to keep them under control, but one man can’t do it all alone. I need to get in with them, and I need a partner, because damned if I’m going into negotiations with them without someone at my back.” Stephanie’s mouth was a moue of appraisal and he paused, waited for her to say something; anything.

“So I’m going undercover as your- what? Your hired girl? Your bodyguard? This is our first job together, and I don’t even know your name. I can’t be your bodyguard; I’d have been around a lot longer for you to trust me like that. I can’t be your hired girl because you wouldn’t bring me more than once, and I’m not goin’ with any of those scumbags unless I gotta jump in the line of fire for a civilian. I can’t be your minion because I got at least a little dignity.”

“My name’s Jason,” he folded his hands in front of him on the table. “And I’d like to present you as my wife, actually.”

There was a time when that would have made him laugh, a shit-eating grin on his face, and most likely Batman at his back. Robin, pretending to have a wife? Laughable at best. There was a time, he knows, when Batman would have been the one going in, Matches Malone firmly on his face.

And chances are good that he would have ended up being the wife, Matches Malone’s cheap little piece of ass, his pretty jailbait boy that no one would dare to touch. But those days are over, now, and Jason just doesn’t have time to woo a woman for real, train her to become a vigilante, and then put her in the line of fire at his side. He needs someone who’s already got the guts, the gumption; who’s already in the game, already knows the score, already packs a solid fucking punch.

“If you showed up at my house and scared the shit out of me just because you need some chick to act like your ditzy trophy wife at a mafia meeting, I’m gonna tase you and not look back,” Stephanie says, dangerously, after a few moments of silence.

“Christ in a canoe, Stephie, that’s not what I mean at all,” he groans, sighs- being dead came without drama that dealing with others naturally implies, and he likes to pretend he’s forgotten how troublesome the egos of vigilantes can be (his own included). “I can’t have a partner outta the blue like this without it being suspicious, and I need a cover that would let you come with me to the meetings and the clubs and shit like that. This way it looks less like we don’t trust them and more like either you don’t trust me, or I need on the road entertainment that won’t break my vows.” He shrugged, a smirk spreading across his face. “And bringing my wife along has the added bonus of making it look like I’m whipped as hell, which can only lower their guard towards me.”

“You’re a dick, you know that?” Stephanie tapped the table. “And we’re gonna have to practice at this shit if you expect them to believe we got married. How long do we have, huh?”

It isn’t long enough, but he’ll work with it- make it seem like more than it is. It’s longer than he would have had if he’d still been working with B.

“The family will be almost entirely in town three months from tomorrow. Best bets are the meetings will start a week after that?” He shrugs. “We don’t have to look like highschool sweethearts or some shit. Say we got married in Vegas- you can pretend to be a rhinestone showgirl for all I care, so long as you’re ready to kick ass in there.”

“I wanna punch you,” Stephanie says nonchalantly, tearing another bite off her waffle. Her teeth flash white, straight and perfect, in the shadows of the kitchen. “I’m just letting you know that now so that you won’t be surprised later on.”

“I wanna have kids someday,” Jason says. “So when you punch me, try to avoid the groin region, please.”

She just smirks into her waffle like she’s got a secret and she’s not telling anyone what it is, and Jason- Jason regrets to say that he’s going to have to continue thinking about how much moxie she’s got.

—

It’s banter like that that gives Jason a little extra hope this might not end in disaster.

They start planning that night, waffles long gone and chairs shoved closer together at the end of the hour. He doesn’t trust her, honestly- she doesn’t trust him either. But he’s impressed with her, the raw determination and the dorky-yet-biting sense of humor. The taser only helps matters.

They’ve got maps of the city laid out and markers, and she’s folding post-it notes from her bag into map markers, dorky little doodles of each of the gangsters on them. It’ll be weeks of surveillance and weeks of Jason getting the word out that he’s got a hot new wife, subtly hinting and feeding information that’ll be sure to get them into the endgame meetings, which will almost surely be somewhere even hell has forsaken, on some boat that he won’t be able to get them off of easily. (Nothing in this life comes easy anymore, does it?)

It’s one am when he orders a pizza, deciding that he’s not gonna sleep before patrol.

“You want double cheese?” he asks her over his shoulder, and she snorts, the kind of indelicate behavior that makes Jason want to keep her, trust or not. She’s a cute kid. A cute kid that seems a little young to have had a cute kid of her own, but he knows that’s not true, not here. He asks, though. He still asks. (He puts it off as wanting to know everything about her, and doesn’t feel that guilty when she explains her douchebag of an ex boyfriend and the adoption papers she signed at the hospital.)

“What an asshole,” Jason tells her, and she nods like she wrote the fuckin’ book on assholes.

“Don’t I know it,” Stephanie sighs, slapping her hand flat on the table and shuffling the papers around one more time, taking a huge bite of her pizza without any hint of embarrassment. The evidence has been reviewed, case made and brought and finalized, and this is actually happening. She’s actually agreeing to spend the months perfecting her ability to pretend to be a known criminal’s wife and vigilante-ing it up with him.

(Known criminal, she says- anti-hero, more like. If Batman’s the light in this city, she figures Jason can at least be the anti-hero. He’s not the Black Mask, and he sure as hell isn’t the Joker; he’s not Bane and he’s not that League of Shadows douche, but he’ll never be the righteous knight in self-deprecating armor that Batman is.)

And if that goes well, well. Anything is possible, as Jason’s learned these past few years. Gotham might be looking at a new power couple.

“Don’t I get a kiss goodnight, sweet pea?” he asks her when he shows her the door around 3 am, all dressed up and ready to play by the docks. The Venezuelans are getting sassy, and the Hood doesn’t take well to people getting sassy with him.

“Don’t you like your testicles where they are?” she says in a saccharine tone, blinking innocently up at him.

“You say the sweetest things,” Jason grins behind cherry-red helmet plates. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, wife-of-mine.”

“Don’t forget to fuck off, hubby.”

Yeah, Jason likes her.

 

**Day Three**

Monday morning, there’s a schedule taped to her fridge, and her roommates are laughing at it.

“What kind of freak are you dating?” one of them asks, tapping the little R.H at the bottom corner and eyeing the color coded chart, the way it clearly blocks out the time Stephanie’s going to be spending with Jason. Steph just rolls her eyes and snatches the schedule.

“You date a guy with OCD for a month and you just might become part of his obsessive compulsions,” she tells them, scrolling down her cell for Jason’s number and dialing it, ducking out onto the fire escape and shutting the window behind her. Gotham’s in full swing, bustling and hustling and dirty-gray clouds high above the city- they’ll drop low by tonight and she’ll be swinging through the fog to meet Jason on the roof of the Gotham MOMA if it keeps on like that.

“Hood,” Jason’s rough voice answers the cell phone, groggy as all get out.

“What’s up, husband?” Stephanie purposefully makes her voice more chipper just to annoy him. “I see you’ve set up the kids’ soccer schedule on my fridge here. It looks like you’ve even blocked out time for my yoga classes, how thoughtful.”

“Christ, you couldn’t have waited until, like, ten am to call me?” he grumbles, the sound of sheets shuffling on the other end. “Yeah, I left that for you earlier. You were still out, I think. Put in some time for us to patrol together, put in some time for us to get to know each other, put in some time for us to be seen together- put in some time for us to have date night. Don’t say I’m not aromantic, I color coded out purple Friday dates for us.” Stephanie can hear him walking, hand hitting the swinging door that leads to his kitchen, and she’s about to comment on the date night thing when she hears a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Cheating on me already?” She laughs out loud at the way Jason groans.

“I swear to god, Kory, if you don’t stop leaving Tamaranian ‘casseroles’ in my fridge-“

“Roy and I know you don’t eat enough,” Stephanie can hear a disapproving voice, faintly accented and far too loud, and Jason’s sigh is bone-deep and weary like he knows he can’t win.

“I’ll call you back, okay?” Jason says, his voice strained. “Actually, no- just meet me on the roof of the MOMA at two.”

“Have fun with the mistress,” Stephanie says cheerfully, hanging up on Jason’s second sigh and tapping her fingers on the rusty-red edge of the fire escape for a moment before heading back inside.

If she’s done her research right, that was Kory Anders- Starfire, infamous superhero and destroyer of New York and San Francisco city property. Jason’ll be tied up for a while- they’ve got ties going back to the days when the Red Hood first showed up, the whole incestuous pool of Gotham vigilantes fighting over each other and claiming kinship that Stephanie couldn’t even guess at. She doesn’t really mind if they’re fucking- Starfire used to do Nightwing, for all she can tell, and she’s pretty sure that ‘Hood and Nightwing aren’t the same guy. But they’re both hot, so she’s internally cheering Starfire on for landing those two by the time she’s showered and dressed and on the way to her History mid-term.

It occurs to her, halfway through question fourteen, that one of these days she’s gonna be one of those Gotham vigilantes, and she has to take a little break to breathe back her excitement. This is the closest she’s ever gotten to her childhood dream, which is totally worth the late nights.

She’s a stone’s throw away from playing in the big leagues now- and damn if it don’t feel so good.

 

**Week Two**

The first Friday date night rolls around eight days after she meets Jason on the roof of the MOMA for some infuriatingly difficult sparring and rooftop agility exercises. (Read: tag. They played rooftop tag.) It’s her choice, apparently- Jason’s trying to be kind of nice. She picks something he’s never done before- not even when he was living with Bruce, and he’s overwhelmingly curious by the time he sees her blonde hair bobbing in the crowd, making its way towards him at the entrance of the Gotham Laser Tag Palace & Arcade.

There are a lot of things he hasn’t done, actually- things he couldn’t do when he was living on the streets, and things he never would have done when he was living with Bruce, because he was too busy being Robin and adoring Bruce (and angsting over that fact) and playing practical jokes on people with all his newfound lack of worry about where he’ll sleep and when he’ll eat next.

“Do I get an actual laser?” he asks her as they wait in line. She snorts, again, that adorable little scrunch of her nose.

“If by that you mean laser sight, then yes. If you meant death ray laser, then no. This is a non-contact, no-blood sport meant for recreation. There’s no sparring, no kill shots, no elimination, nowounding, no physical fighting. There is only strategy and plastic laser pointer guns.”

“This sounds like the most weak-ass version of lasers we could have possibly done training with. Ever.”

“Wait and see, buckaroo, because I guarantee you’re gonna get your ass kicked with an attitude like that,” Steph grinned up at him. “I’m gonna beat you back to Bom-fuckin’-bay, husband.”

“You just try and see what happens, wife.”

Banter like this, for the last week- banter that she suspects is hiding distrust. Banter all through the night, all through the day. Banter on texts, and banter forming a facade she’s becoming steadily more comfortable with. If he doesn’t want to trust her, she’ll deal with it- she doesn’t trust him either. And if banter is their way of coping with their dysfunctional partnership, it can’t hurt them more than it’ll help them with their mission.

Normal husbands and wives do that kind of shit, right?

—

“Stephanie? Stephanie!” he’s shouting, hands shuddering mock-frantically over her vest, shaking her shoulders- he leans down, as if to see if she’s breathing, looks up, sweat streaming down his face. And the kids perched up above are giggling, almost falling out of their sniper’s nest. “You think this is a fucking game?” he yells, shaking his fist up at him, and Stephanie’s laughter makes her chest heave beneath his palm. One of the kids almost slips, he guffaws so hard, and Jason’s grin is masked in Stephanie’s sweaty, apple-scented hair for a moment.

“My love,” she gasps, fighting her wide smile and grasping for his neck, eyes soulful and twinkling with absolute mischief. “I fear I am wounded beyond healing….”

“No, it cannot be,” Jason says, his mouth curving around a deep laugh. “Sweet beautiful Stephanie, you cannot leave me without my one and only soulmate-”

“You must go on, valiant Jason,” she says, mournful. And he smirks, hefting his laser gun slightly and looking up at the kids above. Their eyes go wide, and he quirks an eyebrow.

“I shall avenge you, my dear one,” he says, and the kids scatter as he leaps for the rope ladder, leaving Steph laughing so hard she can’t get up off the floor. He’s taken surprisingly well to laser tag, the hints of his true strength hidden beneath his outwardly playful demeanor. She can’t tell if the way those hips lie is more dangerous than helpful, but that’s the way it seems he wants it.

She’s got the worst sort of inkling that she won’t really know what kind of havoc Jason Todd can wreak until she’s on the other side of it.

He’s hopping along, climbing up the sides of the barriers, and when he shoots the kids that had sprayed Stephanie with their lasers, he laughs. He laughs, and they stare at him, eyes wide. It’s a mirror situation, dark shadows and a circle of people, the Hood standing tall and eyeing them, gun cocked in his hand. Future criminals- current criminals, kids that got out of school not that long ago and are looking to spend their free time having fun before they have to go back. Future criminals- future vigilantes, future citizens. Futures, just waiting to be unleashed. Jason used to be one of them. Jason still is one of them, in a way, a lost little boy just making his way through the world, and he can feel the sympathy slowing his smirk.

“Do you do parkour?” one of them asks after a minute of staring, some twelve year old with a lisp, and he just stands there, looking at the kid for a minute.

“Something like that,” Jason says, tilting his head to the side. “Now, aren’t you kids gonna run along before I avenge my lady love any more?”

**Week Two, Day Four**

Knock-off Persian rugs, sinking into the Gotham harbor, starlight beaming through the murky water. Dead bodies, dumped off the side of a yacht that hasn’t been registered with the marina. Not that many people bother to register, but, if one were to bother, they wouldn’t be anything like the men standing on the deck and dusting their hands off on their black slacks.

“Moles,” a gravelly voice rasps from the shadows, cigar smoke filtering through the night and rising in the cold air. “Bane of my existence.”

“That’s why we take care of ‘em for ya, boss,” the over-eager skipper chirps, bouncing on the balls of his feet, a single bead of sweat working its way down his wide, pale forehead. Gleaming white teeth flash in the darkness, and the glint of metal hits the light reflected from the deck light.

“It’s a damn shame, Mikovitz,” Carson Cavalcante steps out of the underhang and into the brightness of the fluorescent bulb.

“That we take care of tha’ moles for ya?” Mikovitz steps back, bouncing a little faster, and Cavalcante’s laugh resounds around them, echoing off into the distance. The buoy bell rings as the ship drifts pass it, and the woman who had been sitting next to Cavalcante starts to laugh. Fog creeps across the deck. Time stretches out. The drop of sweat hits Mikovitz’s shoulder.

“That you left one behind,” Cavalcante smirks.

Finger, meet trigger.

Bullet, meet brain.

Mikovitz collapses on the deck, the bang of the gun reverberating back at them, and his once-bouncing foot twitches for a second before it goes limp, like the rest of him. Cavalcante’s still burning cigar cherry lands on his chest, a small charred hole appearing in his white shirt, and the woman’s laughter gets even louder as Cavalcante’s smirk gets wider.

“Turn us back to shore, ya lugs,” Cavalcante drawls, stalking back into the shadows, his broad hand wrapping around one of the woman’s slim hips and tugging her after him into the cabin. “And don’t fuckin’ think ‘a disturbin’ us.”

—

“Nasty,” Jason’s mouth twists, his boot scuffing up the edge of the building, a cigarette in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. Steph laughs, her hand pushing at his shoulder.

“I think he’s kinda hot, ya know,” she swings up to stand on the raised edge, her hands out like she’s a six year old on a balance beam. “In that sugar daddy kind of way.”

“Hotter than me?” Jason’s mouth purses in a moue of disappointment, and she just laughs harder, flipping backwards off onto the fire escape below, not dignifying it with a response. Two weeks in, and they’ve got a solid lead or two on the Cavalcante- and they’d have more, if he didn’t keep killing their inside men. Steph thinks he’s probably got a telepath. Jason thinks he’s probably a little too smart for his own good. Neither column A nor column B have any chance of stopping them from utterly destroying his operation from the inside out.

The rooftops line up for them, running across the rows and leaping between the buildings, Stephanie’s gold hair flowing behind her, her purple domino shining dully underneath the blood moon. She’s got confidence, he’ll give her that. And she’s been getting better and better at kicking his ass, though he doubts she’ll surpass him any time soon. He’s never lost a game of rooftop tag to her, and he doesn’t plan on changing that record.

She’s getting better at knowing him, now, too. It’s strange, letting someone in- letting someone in again, more like. Letting someone in, knowing that he’s only gonna leave her in the dust once he fucks up again. Letting someone in, trusting them to watch his back, and eating takeout with her on his ratty old safe house couch.

She likes The Princess Bride, zombie movies, and romantic comedies. She likes superhero cartoons, and Marvel movies, and she likes silly shows about hunting demons and traveling through time. Jason doesn’t know what to do with that, really. But Steph brings popcorn every time she shows up to use his tv, and she usually knocks, and she never drinks the alcohol he’s carefully been stocking up for an epic bender after his inevitable fuck-up. Because when you’re Jason Todd, you don’t have just one big fuck-up.

You have a string of big fuck-ups that you’ll never live down. And you’ll never live ‘em down because you’ll never be lucky enough to stop living.

Life follows you like a bad habit you’ll never be able to kick, and so does every mistake you’ve ever made, whether you’re still a stupid kid or you’re now a stupid adult or you think you’re finally reformed.

Joke’s on you, buddy- Jason Todd doesn’t get to be reformed.

Only reborn.

And Stephanie Brown doesn’t seem to care about any of that.

**Week Three**

In the third week, though, shit goes bad. Shit goes wrong, and shit goes down, and you finally have to crack into the old case of bourbon hidden up in the back left shelf in safe-house D.

“This is disgusting,” Steph drawls through her nose, holding the shot glass as far away from her face as she can. “Utterly disgusting.”

“Fuckin’ drink it,” Jason gripes, downing his and pouring another- downing that one too, and slamming the glass on the battered wooden table. “I cannot fuckin’ believe those assholes.”

“You can’t?” her eyebrow raises higher than Jason thought possible, and he rolls his eyes at her, hard teal iris and blown pupil. “I mean, yeah, sure, whatever. It’s a drug lord meeting, they’re assholes, whatever. But really? Askin’ for a go at you like you weren’t even there?”

“Those aren’t the assholes I was talking about. Asshole.”

And, oh, yeah. Right.

She doesn’t mean the hired muscle and pimps and drug lords that were eyeing her like she was candy and asking Jason for a little side conversation with his girl. She doesn’t mean those jackasses, the ones that Jason had nearly shot in the face for suggesting such a thing- suggesting it to him, after she’d already said no to their groping and their offers.

She means the ones that Jason’s kinda related to. Nightwing and Robin, twin assholes of the night. Gotham’s princes. Fun-ruining joy-sucking buzzkills who show up on the roof when Jason’s attempting to get more information out of a captured Cavalcante lieutenant and have the fucking nerve to mess with Jason’s investigation. What a fucking mess that had been.

He’d been shaking the guy, not even punching him yet, when one of those idiotic little wing-dings had lodged in the back of his hand and he’d dropped the guy onto the tar of the roof, Stephanie lunging forward to swing her fist into the temple of the now-escaping lieutenant and knock him unconscious.

“You threw a party and didn’t invite me, ‘Hood?” Nightwing’s obnoxiously cheerful voice rang out behind him, Jason’s cursing steadily getting louder. Steph’s eyes were wide behind her domino, a half-surprised, half-annoyed look on her face.

“Your invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, ‘Wing,” Jason put on his most mocking tone, turning to face the other vigilante as Robin rappelled down beside the grinning, blue-striped man. “I’m so sorry. I’ll tell Petunia down at the mailroom to resend it.”

“Why, thank you,” Nightwing drawled, stepping forward. “I do hate it when I have to show up unannounced. Don’t you just hate it when that happens, Robin?” The silent boy beside him nodded, moving his hip a little and drawing out a batarang, quick as a flash. Stephanie cursed under her breath, stepping back.

“Now, you’re not getting into trouble, here, are you?” Nightwing cocked his head to the side, hands on his hips, and Jason laughed. “Haven’t done anything illegal tonight? Unpaid parking meters? Trespassed in a city park after dark? Jaywalked?” Jason’s laugh echoed between the buildings on either side of them.

“Mama, just killed a man,” he sing-songed, wrenching the wing-ding out of the back of his glove and flinging it back to Nightwing, who caught it neatly and collapsed it into his gauntlet. “No, that’s a lie. Just a simple conversation, officer.” His smirk widened. “I didn’t think conversations wereillegal around these parts.”

“Not simple ones,” Nightwing’s tone grew dangerous, and Jason cocked an eyebrow.

“You think I would lie to you?” his hand pressed to the red slash of color across his charcoal gray chest, and he tilted his head back, a mocking gasp escaping his lips.

“You just did, ‘Hood,” Nightwing stepped forward again, and Jason stepped back, feeling the edge of the building against the back of his knees. A quick glance showed the Steph had retreated into the shadows of the building, and was hefting- what the fuck? What was that?

A brick, apparently.

A brick that she swung up and smacked straight into the side of Robin’s head as he lunged forward, seeing her moving in the shadows before Nightwing did and moving to apprehend her. He was laughing all the way down to the alley, letting his grapple gun reset casually, looking up at Nightwing’s annoyed expression where the older man peered over the edge of the building. Robin looked over a second later, Stephanie already making her way down the alley towards their bike. He looked unharmed, maybe a little dazed, but- hey. Steph did have quite the swing. Jason’s laugh only got louder.

“It’s my case, big brother,” he shouted up, shoving the gun in his holster. “Fuck off, why don’tcha?” He didn’t pause after that to see what Nightwing was doing. Dick knew better than to try and stop them. At least, Jason hoped he did.

And now, here they are, drinking in his kitchen and dealing with their issues. Problem A, losing their information to the Bats. Problem B, running into the Bats in the first place. Problem C, Jason’s myriad of daddy issues (brother issues) fucking him right in the face right now.

More accurately, Jason’s trying to ignore his family problems and pretend he’s fucked up about the lack of tact that Gotham’s underworld possesses when it comes to ladies. And Stephanie’s drinking alcohol along with him, because. Why not? She’s fucked, anyway, because Robin’s probably already rifling through her underwear drawer and cataloguing the amount of condoms left in the box under her sink, and taking pictures of the posters of Superman on her bedroom walls. Underage drinking is the least of the issues, at this point.

It goes down like fire, her head spinning after half an hour of taking shots whenever Jason pours them. The table’s cool under her forehead, Jason’s arm warm against hers through the under-armor layer.  He’s been taking two shots for every one she takes, and she’s surprised he’s still not slurring. Three am rolls around- his arm is around her shoulders, and she’s pressing her cheek into the warm wrinkles of the cotton around his neck, one leg slung over his thighs.

“Are we gonna fuck?” he says, suddenly, voice like thunder under her hand, her cheek, her leg.

“I might be a little drunk for that,” Stephanie says, matter-of-factly, and his laughs shakes her even more than his voice did.

“Not now, Professor Plum,” his eye roll is almost tangible in his voice. “During this thing. This whole thing, this partnership thing. Thingy. Doohickey. Drunk.”

“One, it’s eggplant. It will always be eggplant, no matter how many other names you give it. Two, I have no idea. I dunno. You’re hot, I’m okay, you’ve got a dick, I’ve got ladyparts, we’ve both got functioning sex drives. It’ll probably happen.”

“Probably?” he turns, looking down at her, shifting until he can see her face. She giggles a little, eyelids fluttering, and his incredulous expression makes her laugh harder. “You’re okay?” The chair creaks when he collapses back into it, and her fingers curl into the soft shirt so that she can pull herself up and into his lap.

“You got a problem, smartass?”

“First of all, I’m a god in the sack. Just. Just know that, okay. Fact. Fact, Jason Todd is a sex god. With a magic penis. And stuff. Alcohol. Second, you are not okay. You are so fucking far from okay. You have tits like the goddamn queen of Sheba. Child bearing hips, motherfucker.” His expression gets very serious as he takes her face in his hands and looks her straight in the eye, looming closer. “I would literally kiss the little dimple at the small of your back until I came in my fuckingpants,” he whispered seriously, his pupils blown wide.

“You get really, really blunt when you’re drunk, you know that?” Stephanie shoved at his chest, sitting back, and his hands rested on the table behind her. “And I’m gonna rip the security cameras out of my shower if you’re obsessing like that over my butt dimple. Like. No. Boundaries, asshole.”

“Oracle does it,” Jason said stubbornly, and Stephanie laughed. “But. But. I respect. Boundaries. Yeah. I respect them. If you don’ wanna, idk, let me make you come so hard you pass out. That’s. Whatever. Your choice.”

“I’ll think about it, buddy,” Stephanie said, sliding off his lap and patting his ruffled curls, fingers sliding through the white strip and over the other side as she walked mostly-steadily towards the pile of stuff where she’d thrown her civilian shoes earlier. “But I’ve got a psych test this afternoon, and right now, I don’t need to contend with your whiskey dick.”

“Bourbon,” he drawled, his cheek pressing into the scarred wooden table. “Bourbon dick.”

“Oh, yeah. Huge difference,” Steph yanked at her laces, tying her boots back up and grabbing her satchel. “If you’re not awake by the time I get here tomorrow, I’m gonna eat the leftover buffalo wings in the fridge. So eat something, you dysfunctional freak.”

“Will do, mom,” Jason mumbled.

And then the door closed behind her.

And he thought.

About blue stripes- about Robin costumes, about the way she felt in his lap, and cold rooftops where unconscious Cavalcante lieutenants probably got triage field care from hot-fuckin-shit vigilantes who act like they’re the highest authority in the goddamn land. About sitting next to her in a meeting, watching Cavalcante smoke a cigar and get a blowjob from an under-the-table and under-the-board prostitute who may or may not make it out of this night alive. About watching their eyes as their eyes watch her, finding himself surprisingly and overwhelmingly protectively possessive of her after only a few weeks of being her partner on the street.

At risk of sounding cliche (or sounding like Dick, and at this point he doesn’t know which one’s worse), these past few weeks there’s just been something about a girl in purple nomex. Eggplant, aubergine, plum- what-the-fuck-ever it was this week. He’s not used to fighting beside her, not yet, and he doesn’t know if he ever will be, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy it. In fact, that’s part of the problem.

He enjoys it too much.

Stephanie signed on for this mission, ratting out and busting up Cavalcante faces and businesses all across the wide swathe of the Gotham underworld.

Jason’s been finding himself more and more willing to consider other missions with her, and now it seems like the real question will be whether or not she’ll want to trade up. Leave him in the dust for a newer model, that Drake kid, with his shiny cameras and his overly-well done secret identity in that rich kid quadrant of his, Brucie Wayne’s newest dilettante orphan. Or perhaps the first model, the classic, the one that never stops talking and never stops looking like he just fell out of a mail order male model catalogue, fully formed and impossibly attractive. Hell, maybe she’ll go for the real starter and pull an even numbered stunt, ending up at the Bat’s side despite her relative lack of Battish traits.

At this point, it seems like anything is possible but what Jason wants.

And that’s why he doesn’t drink bourbon. What a maudlin drunk he makes, miserably thinking over all the ways his one new friend will leave him soon, and forgetting the friends he already has. His fingers fumble, but he still manages to dial Kory’s cell phone, and it’s clear from the tone of her voice when she answers that she wasn’t asleep or otherwise occupied.

“It’s empty, in here,” he says, soft and slurred a little, and Kory’s sigh is fond and somehow full of willing friendliness.

“Have you been eating those casseroles?” she asks him, and he bangs his head into the table. Because he has been eating them. But it’s just like her to ask that, mothering him even when he’s calling for company that’s so far from motherly it makes him sick to connect the two.

“Of course I have, Kory,” he plays along, and her laugh warms him up from deep in his chest, Roy’s voice mumbling something Jason can’t catch.

“I will check to make sure you are telling the truth, Jason, when we get there,” she tells him. Jason smiles into the warm space between the darkness under the table and his chin, pressing into his chest through his t shirt.

“I look forward to it.”

And he doesn’t feel so alone, not anymore, not when Kory knocks on the balcony that leads into this safe house’s bedroom, and Roy’s laughter fills the spaces as Kory’s warm palms eat up the skin on Jason’s muscled hips, tugging him up into an impossibly strong and unbearably sweet kiss.

“When is your new partner going to join us?” Kory asks him, Roy’s fingers twining with hers and red stubble scraping across Jason’s neck. He sighs, tilting to the side, and grips Roy’s wrists with alcohol-clumsy fingers. “She is… captivating. Loud and bright. She reminds me of when you were Robin,” Kory’s breath fans, hot, across his cheek, and Jason lets his eyes shut, the laughter of a bird finally set free echoing around in the jagged cavity of his chest.

“You’ve been peeking, Kory,” he half-laughs, half-grimaces. “She’s not going to join us, though. She’s just my partner. We’re working the Cavalcante case together.”

“Let him pretend that denial’s just a river in Egypt,” Roy pushes up against him from behind, Kory’s hair tangling wildly around the both of their hands. Jason’s laughter, a little too twisted and truthful, rumbles through his diaphragm and into Kory’s stomach, and she giggles them all the way down onto the bed.

Friendship, tactile and loving, and everything that makes Jason think of times he was tackled on the couch, on the beds, on the mats of the Cave by another impossibly flexible and inexorably cheerful vigilante. Friendship, touching and feeling and company so much more than mere talking, is what holds the three of them together. Roy’s mouth leaves bruises all across his scapulae, asking without words if he can make Stephanie jealous, leaving his fingerprints and Kory’s hair-marks and little fractures of Jason’s overall Jason-ness, just to see if she’ll even notice it tomorrow.

He’s exhausted when he falls asleep, his head pillowed on Kory’s stomach and his arms wrapping around Kory and all the way over to Roy, his legs tangling with the redheads’ and his breath evening out to the soft, soothing sound of Kory’s voice where she talks to Roy above his head. He dreams that the softly moving stomach beneath him is paler, and that blond hair sticks to his skin when he straddles Stephanie and smirks her into the mattress, fighting her for the top position and rocking until she gives it up so sweet and so fierce that he wakes up gasping into Kory’s skin.

And in the morning he is thankful for the friendships he’s retained these past few months, because Kory makes waffles and Roy makes bacon and the two of them hug him until he can feel himself getting lazarus-green and irritable before they return to their apartment in New York.

**Week Four**

She fights like a wildcat that can’t be contained, fever quick, bright like a flash. It’s captivating to watch, makes him fidgety and reinforces his punches, and it draws up the adrenaline coursing through his veins into spikes that shoot through his lower stomach. Sometimes, when she knocks someone out, when she wipes blood off her gauntlet and grins, fierce and fight-crazed, he wants to kiss her vicious. He wants to kiss her until her teeth cut his lip, and he tries not to, because they’re staking out this Cavalcante base for another six hours before respite. She’s a light, painfully clear and white and never flickering for a moment.

When the terror comes over him, sometimes, and he strikes out- when he shoots too fast and too accurate, when he splatters blood across the walls with a knife and remembers living on the street, she feels so bright next to his dingy, dirtied soul that he almost wants to throw a sheet over her to dim the light effusing from her. He’s dragging her down to his level every day that he teaches her another possibly lethal combination, or lets her carry a gun, or gives her  taser set on full power before they go into an interrogation or a bust.

And there are the times, of course, when they hang out together normally. Go to the movies, bicker over lunch choices, read flash cards from one of Stephanie’s classes out loud because she swears it’ll teach him to be more familiar with her. (Like he could get more familiar with her if he even tried. What, is he gonna have to pick tampons for her next time? Jason’s not sure that Stephanie really *wants* to get more familiar.)

Despite the sick feeling in Jason’s stomach when he sees her grin after she pulls the bullets out of bleeding, sobbing lieutenants, he can’t help but be proud of how well she’s doing.

So it’s conflict in the House of Todd once more- just like always.

Some things never change.

**Week Four, Day Two**

“It’s been one week since you looked at me,” Stephanie murmurs into her comm, laughing under her breath at the resounding silence answering her. “Cocked your head to the side and said I’m angry. Five days since you laughed at me, said ‘get that together and come back and see-”

“You’ll recite the whole song if I don’t respond, won’t you?” the dry voice of Robin came through the comm, crackling in her ear, and she let her laughter ring through the alley a little before she breathed the night air deep and responded.

“You know me so well, R,” she leaned back against the brick. “By the way, I appreciated that you replaced the Superman sheets the ‘Hood destroyed. Thanks for that. I didn’t think they even made those anymore.”

Silence, and then- “They don’t. But, as it happens, I know somebody who had an extra set. Never used. Put in storage as… insurance.” A small hitch in his breath. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m so glad you’ve got such worthy contacts, Robin. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, this isn’t exactly a social call I’m making, here. I’ve got a request for you and your boss.”

“Noted.”

“Hood- J and I are going in to the Cavalcante on an undercover mission soon, and I know that you and your flock have been looking into the same shit we’ve been rustling around in. And I’m asking you to let it go.”

“How did you even get this frequency, again?”

“I’m a real good persuader, R.” She grins at his misdirection, his purchase of time to think, and lets her head press back against the bricks, looking up at the smog and twirling a shuriken between her fingers.

“Well, you know our rules. If there’s one dead thug in that banquet hall by the time that the Boss and I arrive, well. I think you understand.”

“It’s just too bad you boys can’t make it for more than dancing and sweets, but I’m sure dinner with the senators really does take precedence over their paltry seven course offering.”

“I look forward to sampling your colleagues’ just desserts, Mrs. Hood.”

“Good talk, Pun Wonder. Good talk.”

 

**Week Five**

He teaches her to dance the way Bruce used to teach him (the larger man dressed in a parody of womanhood, the faintest trace of a smile beneath poorly applied, waxy lipstick that showed off exactly none of his talent with disguises, meant to put Jason at ease in his clumsiness). She’s already graceful, the way she fights mesmerizing.

If fighting with her had reminded him that she’s alive, though, in a blood-mad, laughing rage as she beat him down into the mats, a snarl on her face and a grin in her eyes and pride along the edge of her shoulders- dancing with her reminds him that he’s alive too. She’s warm and softer than anyone that dangerous has a right to be, all pressed up against him, the palms of her hands feeling hot through his old tee shirt.

His ragged and chipped stereo plays Etta James, echoing through the basement of a safe house, the fluorescent lights flickering and her heels sticking a little in the mats. After this, he’ll make her run drills or spar or something to get her balance absolute in the shoes, because anything less than perfect form in heels will break your ankle in no time flat. At last, Etta James says, and Jason hurts a little to feel so alive, in this moment.

Because Stephanie is beautiful, like this- Stephanie is beautiful always, even when she feels ugly, and she shines this shine he’s so attracted to that he doesn’t quite know what to do with the feeling. Biting wit and biting teeth, spars and sweat and bad puns, and she’s in so many ways exactly like Talia and nothing like her, all at once. Her sheer will to survive, to beat those who haven’t been beaten before, to rise up and show the world that the phrase isn’t ‘powerful… for a woman’, it’s ‘powerful… because she’s a woman’.

But, although she’s graceful when she wants to be, and she moves like her hips were oiled to distract, she has none of the snakelike thirst for blood, nor the sense that everything she does is a prelude to violent, violent demise.

If Talia was Jason’s fling with darkness, Stephanie is his attempt at reaching for the sun.

She moves in a tight box step, in a waltz- she moves in a tango, hooking her ankle around his, and he breathes in the smell of her sweat and her apple shampoo, two dollars at the corner drugstore, mixed with her sharp, fresh, cottony deodorant.

Her shirt is damp with exertion, and so is his, from their fighting earlier, and her running shorts expose lengths of leg that he wants to wrap around his own waist, press fingers into and leave little red marks all the way down to her elegant, strong ankles. When she shakes her head, blond hair floats across his face, and he laughs, startled into it by the tickle on his nose.

Her grin makes his chest feel like it’s caving in.

When he presses her back against the wall of the basement, dragging the edge of his calloused thumb down her jawline and breathing against her sweet, ticklish hair, the sound of his heart beating overwhelms his ears, and his breath stutters in his lungs.

“I’m alive,” he says, dumb with realizations, looking down at her solemn blue eyes, and her smile curves cherry lips so sweet he thinks he’ll die right there and then.

“Oh, honey,” she says, simple and comforting, and she wraps her arms around his waist, laying her cheek against his chest, right over his traitorous heart. “Me too.”

When she goes home to study for her math test, there’s a sucking hole in the space where she was all afternoon, at his side, and he punches a hole in the wall trying to ignore it.

**Week Six**

“Not quite, not quite. Back to the dressing room.”

“Back to the dressing room, wench,” Stephanie grumbled, tucking the skirt of the long gown over her arm and trudging back to the room, eyeing herself in the mirror with tired eyes. “Parade yourself around the store like a cart of tea sandwiches and confections, wench. Dress yourself up like you’re in a higher tax bracket,  _wench_.”

“Back-sass your partner, wench,” Jason’s amused voice sounded behind her, the older man leaning in the doorway with a dress bag over his forearm and a smirk on his face. “Try this one on for size.”

Creamy, silky, floating eggplant fabric, tight on her bust and smooth as butter as it fitted down around her bodice, flowing outwards like the dream of a nineteen forties movie star, dripping with glamour and late nights out with men who can make your wildest fantasies come true.

An off the shoulder pair of sleeves, little bands of gauzy ribbon that cupped her biceps- a slit up the thigh that made her feel a little more like a Bond girl- a pair of T-strap heels that Jason tossed her way. Even with her hair escaping its braid and her face devoid of makeup, and her complexion washed out by the lighting in the dressing room-

“I changed my mind,” Jason’s voice is gruff and gravelly and threaded a little with something hot and dangerous as she cocks her hip and her leg slips through the slit of the dress. “I didn’t marry you for your clever mind, Mrs. Hood. I married you for your looks.”

“How am I supposed to hide all those weapons in this outfit?” Her hand smooths down the line of the dress, over her hip, pulling the slit to the side. “I can’t even have a garter with a Glock in it.”

“Tasers in your cleavage, hand to hand combat training, the fact that your tits are going to distract everyone in the place? We’ll figure out how to conceal and carry, don’t worry about it. I’d wager to say that you’ll be packing more heat than most of the men in the place when they see you in that dress.”

**Week Eight**

A left hook catches her by surprise, tonight. The brick is hard, cold, and her hip scrapes along it when she tries to pivot out of the fall. .

“Fucking fuck, you’re gonna regret that.” A heel to his groin, a palm to his throat, a snap at his ribs that makes them creak and crack audibly, and she stomps on his ankle when he goes down, standing above him victoriously, barely even panting. “God, I’m sick of pimps.”

“I get the feeling they’re pretty sick of you too, golden girl,” Nightwing’s cheery voice echoes down at her from the top of the building.

“Yeah? That what they tell you when you clock in?”

“Now, now, that’s not very nice,” he slid down the side of the building, catching rungs of fire escapes and generally defying gravity until he was standing before her, hands on his hips. “I’m at least pricey enough to be contract client only.” She laughed, throwing her head back, and leaned back against the brick.

“You’re funnier when you’re not mashing all of Jay’s triggers like a toddler playing Mario Kart, Nightwing.” He cocked his head to the side, his grin stretching wider.

“That’s not how you play?” His laughter bounced between the buildings. Stephanie could feel herself relaxing without consciously thinking about it, at ease under his glittering gaze. “I am here for a reason, though. No matter how much I’ve been missing good banter lately.”

“Yeah? Issuing your cease and desist letters a little early in the evening, man.”

“Nah,” he stretched out a hand, blue fingerstripes beckoning. “I was just hoping I could convince you that it wasn’t too early for some waffles and milkshakes at the diner. It’d be a shame if I pushed away my only fellow waffle enthusiast just because my younger brother’s a jackass who doesn’t know how to share.”

“Waffles are the first step to atoning for acting like a dick,” she said, nodding her head, and his fingers closed around hers.

“Funny you should say that, because…”

It turns out Dick (yes, Dick) likes strawberries and whipped cream on both his waffles and his chocolate peanut butter shake, which. Well. Stephanie’s not saying she’s about to leave Jason for his older brother, but- yeah. She’s about to leave Jason for his older brother. He drags them into the diner in costume and all, waving to the waitress and winking at the hostess, and taking a booth in the back, opening up the massive menu like he doesn’t already know what he wants, and she thinks the waitress is about to swoon when Dick orders with a rakish grin and ‘fuck me in the back alley’ written all over his face. Which is attractive.

Like, stupidly so.

And it’s nice. It’s a hell of a lot nicer than bitching at him on a rooftop, or going behind his back to ask Robin if he’d possibly help her out. It’s even nicer than watching his ass on the news when the helicopters catch a particularly good shot.

“You know, I’m glad you said yes to this, ‘cause Jason never lets us hang out with his girlfriends,” Dick says, eventually, a little bit of whipped cream on the tip of his nose and a tilted head. Stephanie chokes on her milkshake, spluttering and waving her hands, and she has to pound on her chest a little to clear it out of her esophagus before she can speak.

“Yeah, uh, Jason and I? Not dating,” she rasps, grabbing a napkin from the chrome dispenser and wiping her mouth. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t let you hang out with his girlfriends because, as far as I know, all you guys do is bicker until one of you punches someone else and leaves. Which doesn’t leave you guys a lot of time to bond, or talk about chicks, or whatever. I don’t even know if he’s had girlfriends since he’s been, y’know- undead and all that jazz. World’s best preserved zombie boy.”

“Kory says he’s got a woefully inadequate dating life, but let’s be real here,” Dick dipped a square of waffle in his milkshake and bit into it, talking through the mouthful. “With Kory’s standards of comparison, that could mean anywhere from ‘Jay’s still a virgin’ to ‘Jay’s been going through three women a night for the past six months’.”

“Well, I can verify that Kory should very well know whether or not Jay’s a virgin,” Stephanie sipped her milkshake again, cautiously watching to make sure Dick didn’t say anything in the middle of her drink. “Hint: he’s not. I swear to god I’ve seen Kory naked more than I’ve seen myself naked these past few weeks. She and Roy come down to see Jay at least once a week, depending on how much Kory thinks Jay’s been skipping meals.” Dick shrugged, laughing into his straw and getting a little more whipped cream on the tip of his nose, beaming across the table at her.

“Yeah, you’re not dating now, okay,” he tapped the spoon on the edge of his plate, waffles decimated. “But, ya know. You want to. He wants to. Mutual wanting-to all mixing up in that safe house like somebody febrezed sexual tension all over while you two were out kicking ass together.” He winked, and she shook her head. “Detective, World’s Greatest? Trained by? C’mon.”

“You know we’re not actually married, don’t you?” she dug into her side pouch, pulling out a few bills for the tip, and Dick shoved them down the front of her pants in a show of flexibility that almost made her hip flexors hurt.

“Nah, c’mon. My treat. It’s a big brother’s prerogative to treat his little sister to midnight waffles when he wants to,” he said, eyes serious where they glimmered behind the open lenses of his mask. “A little sister who’s family, now, whether she married in or not.”

“I was but an only child,” Stephanie said slowly, grinning back at him as she got out of the booth and tugged her gauntlets back on. “Give me a grace period to get used to it. Big brother.”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” Dick beamed up at her, his fingers tangling with hers for a brief moment, squeezing gently. “And hey, remind your partner, why don’t you? Ohana means family, Stephie. And family means nobody gets left behind, whether they’re grumpy boys in red hoods or not.”

When she gets back to the safe house, early in the morning, Jason glowers at her from the kitchen table.

“Traitor,” he sniffs, shining the barrel of his gun with his nose in the air, and she smacks the back of his head as she passes him on her way to the fridge. “Being bought out with waffles and milkshakes.”

“You might try to get along with them, you know?” she poured herself a glass of orange juice, hopping up on the counter and wiggling until her back rested against the cabinets. “Even if it’s just for free waffles now and again.” He swiveled in the chair, fixing her with a serious look, and she took a deep breath. “Look, man. I get it- you died. They didn’t avenge you the way you wanted. You’re torn up about it, and you’ve got every right to be. But you don’t get to burn all your bridges and burn mine too. We’re sharing the town with them, and everything will be much easier if we get along. Now, I don’t know, the Batman? Probably gonna be a prick about this. He’s not very good at sharing his toys. But Nightwing and Robin aren’t half bad, and I’m just gonna say it- I enjoy their company. I want to partner with them. I want them around. I like being part of that branch of the family.”

“You’re better off with them anyway,” Jason grumbled, turning back to his gun. “No need to hand in a two week.”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot, man,” Stephanie laughed, hopping off the counter and putting her empty glass in the sink. “If you think I’m leaving you for those guys, I’m gonna have to wonder what wires got crossed in your brain when they dumped you in that pit.”

She leaves before dawn, making it back to her apartment to collapse in her bed around four a.m., and she has enough time to briefly wonder if Jason’s still going to be drunk and sullen when she gets there tonight before she passes out.

**Week Nine**

“Okay, so I might have a few issues with abandonment,” Jason tells her, breaking the nose of a Venezuelan enforcer and knocking him into a dumpster as she kicks out the kneecaps of another hulking gang member. Her laughter is so loud and raucous that she can see the bright, sharp glitter of fear in the eyes of the gang members before she knocks them out cold.

“Paging Guinness, paging Guinness, we’ve got the most massive understatement of the year on the line,” she says, zip-tying the rest of the gang members together and dusting her hands off.

“Look, I’m admitting that I have a problem, here,” Jason watches her, his hood gleaming dully in the sodium light of the streetlight, and she just stands and breathes for a moment.

“The first step to recovery, man,” she says, sheathing her knife, and he knows they’re okay when she claps him on the shoulder harder than necessary before starting to scale the fire escapes to get to the roof of the building.

**Week Twelve**

“I swear to the sweet baby Jesus that I am going to punch your stupid face if you try and make me waltz one more goddamn time,” Jason whines, collapsing on the couch and covering his face with his hands, stained with motor oil from working on his bike earlier. Before Stephanie had come over and demanded more dancing lessons- the thirteenth time she’s done that in the past three weeks. “You’re gonna do fine, Stephie.”

“I’m gonna trip in those stupid heels and die right there and then, and then you’ll have no partner for your dumb mission,” she gripes, poking the back of his hand and leaning over him, her hair straggling down from its ponytail to wisp across his forearm and forehead.

She has approximately two seconds between catching a glimpse of one dangerous teal iris and trying to find her balance as he whips his hands out, dragging her down to sprawl across him. Her shriek almost hurts his ears, and he grins up at her like the smartass he is as she tries to wiggle herself into a position where she doesn’t feel like she’s going to topple off of him and onto the carpet below.

“Shh, pretty girl,” Jason murmurs, tucking an escaping strand of blonde hair back behind her ear and breathing peppermint gum breath across her pink cheekbones. “You’re gonna do fine.” She huffed a breath, bracing herself against his shoulders and letting her forehead hit his with a gentle bump.

“You say that now, but just watch. I’m going to stumble and knock you over, or I’ll spill wine on some big shot mob boss, and I’ll be blacklisted and useless.”

“You think someone’s gonna blacklist the Red Hood’s wife?” Jason’s laugh rumbled through her stomach, spiking flutter, adrenaline-laced arousal in her stomach, and she wiggled just a little more. “They’re more likely to cut off their own hand to expedite the process of what I’ll do to them when I find out who insulted my lovely bride.”

“Lovely, huh?” she laughed, her cheeks flushing involuntarily, and her thigh slipped across his as she tried to push up and off of him, but he stopped her, his fingers hot on her waist and his eyes serious. Hyperaware.

She could tell where his hair had tried to curl, where he’d finger combed it back while he was working on the bike- where he missed a few stray hairs on the edge of his jaw when he shaved yesterday, and the hairs were a little longer than the rest of the stubble. Where his lip had cracked when some thug had punched his bare face in a brawl, and it was just healing up now, his mouth glossy and red under a coat of mint and beeswax lip balm meant to protect the small lesion.

“Yeah,” Jason said slowly, his free hand threading through the loosened hair at the back of her head and his finger hooking in her ponytail as he tugged a little. “Lovely.”

And then he was kissing her, lips slick and mouth soft and breath sweet- body warm and nose nudging her cheek. Kissing her, slowly, gently tilting her head to the side and looking up at her as he dropped his head back down on the couch cushion.

“C’mere, pretty girl,” he coaxed, voice all slow and sweet like honey, and he bent his elbows, scooting up to slide his hands down her back and pull her up into his lap, her breath seeming too loud in the space between them as he kissed her again. And again.

And again.

She could feel the dizzy coming on, her stomach twisting up in adrenal knots, and her chest inflating like a balloon. Her legs couldn’t stay still, tightening around his waist and relaxing without her permission, and her fingers tangled in the neck of his soft old t-shirt like it was her last lifeline to land before his kisses could sweep her out to sea.

His fingers splayed out on her hips, and she sucked in a breath, feeling his gaze on her like a brand sweeping down her body as she hunched her shoulders and the scoop top of her off-the-shoulder top gaped open. Stephanie rolled her hips against his, shuddering at the pangs of arousal that resonated through her stomach, and Jason’s low groan sparked off a string of helpless, weak sounds, his fingers sliding down to grip her ass and pull her flush against his lower abdomen.

“Remember when you asked me if we were gonna fuck?” he rasped, nudging his nose along the edge of her jawline and sucking at the pounding pulse in her neck, and she grasped helplessly at him.

“Yeah, of course-” of course she didn’t. Coherency was in short supply, rocking up against the erection clearly outlined in his jeans, and she was feeling a little too lightheaded, a little too close to coming just from rubbing her clit up against the zipper seam of her jeans to mind the way he laughed at her mumbling reply.

“Yeah, we’re gonna fuck,” Jason said, gravelly voice and aroused groaning against her throat as he hoisted her up across his hips and felt his way along the wall with one elbow until they could collapse on his bed. She stared up at him, blonde hair in a disarray across the covers and pants slipping off her hips, shirt pushed all the way up to her rib cage.

“Yeah,” she said faintly, grasping his forearms with hot hands, and he smirked, putting one knee up on the bed and dragging one finger down the line of her abdomen, dipping into her bellybutton and eating up her shudder, and slipping a fingertip down the seam of her zipper. His eyes widened slightly, finger pressing a little harder, and she was being kissed out of her mind again before she could even ask him what was wrong.

“Oh my fucking fuck,” Jason growled, fumbling the copper button out of its clasp and tugging the zipper down with a loud rasp and no regard. “You soaked through your goddamn jeans-”

She didn’t make it home before patrol.

**Week Thirteen**

“Saturday. 9:30 pm. The Burgundian Ballroom.”

“Tell me you’re buying me dinner first, at least,” she sighs, tracing her fingers down the list of half semester criminology courses the university offers, wedging the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “A girl’s gotta eat, you know.”

“I’ll wear a condom and everything, darling. Perfect gentleman, that’s me.”

“Is that what they called you down there?”

“Satan himself said it, swear on my kris.”

“Charmer.”

**Week Thirteen, Day Three**

“Your name is Effie Todd, neé Nirkev. Your mom was a Russian immigrant, and your dad was a real dick, and you grew up out west in San Francisco. You wanted to become a model, but between your dad knocking you around on the nights before your auditions and the fact that you wouldn’t put out to get jobs where they didn’t care about the bruises, it took your mom’s Russian ties to get you up working as a waitress for one of the mobs out there just to get enough money for rent. You were going to college when one of the high ups decided they wanted you out here in Gotham, and you came here as the alternative to getting dumped in the bay. I found you in the alley one night, where I thought you were getting mugged- turns out, you could hold your own, and after I watched you beat the shit out of the mugger, I bought you a coffee and followed you home.”

“You’re such a fucking creep,” Stephanie laughed, pressing her temple against his bare shoulder and closing her eyes against the rising dawn that crept beneath the edge of the curtains in the bedroom. “Even in our fake backgrounds you’re a stalker who follows young girls home and creeps into their bedrooms.”

“Stick with what you know?” Jason stroked the hair from her face, closing his eyes as well and relaxing even more into the mattress. “Anyway, I was persistent enough to get you to go on a date with me, and from there, well. Two months later we signed the papers, and now I’ve got a smokin’ hot wife who’s just barely out of her jailbait years.”

“I’m the shiniest trophy you’re ever gonna get out of your shady-ass night time activities, baby.”

“Damn straight.”

**Week Thirteen, Day Five**

“Please be safe, little sister,” the note says, scrawled out in blue pen with a little drawing of a bird at the bottom. It’s taped to two escrima sticks that are not only collapsible but also specifically designed to fit in her garter belt she’d picked up the other day for use under her dress for the Burgundian.

She’s stuck between being flattered, a little creeped out, and incredibly happy with how much pain these things can clearly cause someone. The way Jason’s eyes darken when he walks into the dojo to find her admiring the way they fit in the garter belt, wearing only the garter belt, makes her settle on incredibly happy.

After she regains coherency and manages to persuade Jason into only partially cleaning the sticky off the inside of her thighs with his tongue in favor of a nap and a spar, she fumbles for her phone and texts Dick a quick thank you.

She gets so many smiley faces back she puts her phone on silent just so she can actually take the nap she’d persuaded Jason into.

**Week Thirteen, Day Six**

Robin drops off a small facial recognition dossier for her to study, and she takes great pleasure in the way his cheek flushes bright peachy pink when she kisses it in thanks.

**Week Fourteen**

She slides the stockings up her legs, clipping them to the garters, and the buckles on the t-strap heels gleam in the low light of the room. A layer of coral lipstick later, Jason hooks a strand of pearls around her neck, cool weights that slide down across her sternum and rest in the dip of her cleavage.

She looks like a blonde bombshell that fell straight out of a 1940’s detective’s wet dream, and she likes it.

Jason clearly likes it too, but- they’re going to be late for the gala if she lets him do anything about that, and so he just cages his heat behind steely eyes and rests his palm against the back of her hip as they walk up the stairs to the entrance of the Cavalcante’s main haunt, the Burgundian.

The ground is crawling with thugs, clearly armed, subtlety forgone on this occasion. Suits and dresses mask the participants, but Stephanie’s seen these men bleeding on the ground after one of her punches or a doozy of a kick, and she’s seen exactly how much the creepy ones get turned on at the way she beats them down into the ground.

Life as a crimefighter puts a tarnish on everything, it seems.

The appetizers are delicious, and Jason’s raucous laughter puts her somewhat at ease, the way he shakes the hands of all these men like he doesn’t make their lieutenants heads roll when he wants to- the way they kiss her hand like they wouldn’t kidnap her the second that Jason made a wrong move.

She tries to smile just dangerously enough to let them know that that wouldn’t be a good idea, and she thinks she succeeds when one of them recoils slightly as she tilts her smile in his direction. She’s the sword in his scabbard, now, the ace up his sleeve, and she’s an element that none of them were expecting.

“Why, Mrs. Maurice,” Stephanie drawls, “please, don’t be a stranger. Jay really does try to be an attentive husband, but sometimes, you know. The business and all.” Vivian Maurice’s cheekbones pinken, and her eyelashes flutter as she looks up at Stephanie from her miniscule height of five foot four in three inch heels. Stephanie smirks like a shark, kissing her cheek and leaving a bright lipstick print that will come off as easily as water might- but Vivian doesn’t even try to wipe at it.

“Really, it’s Vivian, Mrs. Todd,” the smaller woman demurs, but Stephanie can tell she’s a little dazed from the way Stephanie’s been leaning in close and smiling at her, pressing her fingertips to the soft palm of the other woman and practically beaming sapphic intent at her. It’s a feeling as powerful as she’s ever felt when putting on the ritz for a man, and it’s useful. Vivian Maurice is much less likely to notice the way Stephanie’s  been pressing little cameras to things and sticking microphones on bookshelves if she’s too busy watching the way Stephanie’s hips sway underneath the aubergine silk.

“Then I must insist you call me Effie, Vivian,” Stephanie breathes across Mrs. Maurice’s ear, and the twenty-three year old flushes even deeper and stutters up at her in little bursts of words that make absolutely no sense. She smiles indulgently at her and sweeps her fingertips across the line of Mrs. Maurice’s shoulders as she turns for the door of the library, plotting out her course around a few other groups of chatting socialites from Gotham’s finest underworld circles, leaving the woman a little shell shocked behind her.

The bathroom has a bouquet of gardenias in it, intoxicating smells that fight to distract her. Her hair is still perfect in finger waves, her pearls are still falling exactly as they should. Her escrima sticks are still holding in place, and the database back at the safe house is about to gain approximately one terabyte of knowledge on the goings on behind the facade of the Cavalcante family business. She knows where the room is, and she feels like fucking Jane Bond with the way she’s rocking this dress.

It’s not too hard to make it into the actual computer room, and it’s equally as easy to leave the USB in the port, watching the little green light blink and byte after byte of information beams back to their base. It’s almost too easy- and, when Stephanie pockets the little wireless USB transmitter, it turns out it was. She exits the room to find two tall guards  oh-so-casually leaning on the wall across from the doorway to the big study she’d just, you know, infiltrated. And hacked.

Stephanie straightens up and sticks her best sultry look on her face, swaying her hips in unnecessarily wide arcs as she turns and closes the doors, fanning herself a little and blinking a little too fast.

“Hello, boys,” she purrs, winking at the one on the left. “You wouldn’t know someplace a lady could get a little… privacy, would you?”

-

Jason finds himself drinking scotch in a study before an hour has passed, hoping that Stephanie knows what she’s doing and clenching his fists a little under the guise of gripping his glass at the way the mob bosses are talking about their business.

Dealing to kids, dealing to pregnant women- Jason knows he’s talked to them about this, and as much as he hates it, right now? He can’t afford to go on another little vengeance spree and send a few heads rolling their way to get them to quit it for a little. The domino is heavy on his face, red and gleaming like blood, and Cavalcante offers him another pour of scotch that burns down his throat as he knocks it back, grinning up at the man just wildly enough to spark a little fear in his eyes.

I’m gonna get you for this, because you know full well all the rules you’ve been breaking, Jason’s eyes say, and he clicks his teeth together a little, rolling his head. Conversation is turning tides, turning towards more serious things- things that Jason will have to pretend he wants, things that Jason will go along with until he knows more than enough to destroy. A reactor, built beneath the city. Enough hostage power to hold Gotham for weeks, to built up bank accounts and take over whole sections of the docks. A drug that someone in the shadows had promised, a little chemical composition that will make sure all of their girls stay put and stay willing.

A deadly combination of familial tensions and nuclear power, and somebody orchestrating it all from the darkness, someone that’s not even here.

He wants to throw his glass to the floor when he thinks about it- and he thinks about it. The person they’ve been pinning all this on isn’t even here tonight. Most likely, that person isn’t even on this side of Gotham. Jason’s eyes cloud, the tie constricting around his neck, and he presses the palm of his free hand against the knife strapped to his thigh.

Bruce wouldn’t have made a mistake like this.

Brought his partner in here, half the information and a poor alias in place.

Bruce wouldn’t have brought Robin in like this, not if he didn’t even know of the true culprit was here. He would have done more recon, he would have made sure. He would have had better aliases and alibis for them, and Robin would never have-

Robin.

Jason nearly kicks himself when he stops, mid-thought, and just stares at the bottom of his glass for a moment, letting the word swirl around and down, down the drain of amber liquid and sharp shocking alcohol burn.

Stephanie… isn’t Robin.

Stephanie will never be Robin.

He’s about to stand up and go to find her, go find her and tell her that for as long as Stephanie isn’t Robin, Jason will try his hardest not to be Bruce when the door of the study opens, and she’s standing right there, flanked by two guards.

Well, shit.

-

Stephanie doesn’t really mean to end up with an attractive thug on either side of her, swaying her way down the hallway, but it’s that’s what happens. She tried to steer them towards some alleyway, some shadows, but they didn’t seem to get the hint- not until she turned, pressed her back up against the wall, and said, in a very clearly intoxicated voice, “Look, boys, I just want a coupla guys to fuck me, and fuck me hard, and I ain’t into gettin’ discovered by the rest of the party. Ya dig?”

She should have known that the smirks they’d exchanged and the way they’d started leading her down an entirely different corridor were not, in fact, good news. She does know, though, she knows- she knows, now. Now that she’s standing in the doorway of some kind of study and staring right at the room full of men that her ‘husband’ was supposed to be schmoozing with. Yeah, about that. They were clearly socializing just a few seconds before, but now she just feels entirely too naked, and their gazes feel entirely too… penetrating for her tastes.

“One more for the party, boss,” the taller guard says to the man Stephanie can positively identify as Cavalcante, and Jason’s fingers are clearly white around his glass of scotch. She tilts her head back a little and winks at him, and their grip lessens slightly- slightly. The door shuts behind her before she can begin her excuses.

She’s never felt more like she was a sheep who’d wandered into the wolves’ den than she does right now, eyes on her from all sides and teeth bared behind lascivious smirks.

Take a deep breath, Stephanie. And just think. What would Superman do?

No, not that. Because Superman doesn’t, she’s sure, end up being eyed by mobsters like she’s some sort of candy to be consumed, and Superman also probably would just charm and/or beat the absolute crap out of anyone who did that.

This situation, this scenario- this world, where she’s Effie Todd, and she’s married to the Red Hood, and she’s just barely 19 and still insecure in that highschool way, calls for a different question.

What would Catwoman do?

-

When Stephanie smiles Selina’s smile and starts to walk straight towards him, her thigh peeking out from the slit and her hips swishing back and forth, Jason has to swallow the sip of scotch he’d had burning in his throat and grip the couch cushion.

“Jason, darling,” she purrs, bending over at the waist to brush her manicured fingernails across his jawline and kiss his cheek. “I was wondering where you’d gotten off to.”

“Thought I told you to find yourself a playmate, sweetheart,” Jason murmurs, voice gruff, his hand resting on her waist and then sliding down a few inches. “This ain’t the place for you.” Her pout is so convincing that he almost believes it, for a moment, and then her lips are just millimeters from his ear, even if she’s speaking in such a staged whisper it’s a wonder the men around him don’t snap out of their mesmerized drooling at how obviously she wants them to hear her.

“But Jason,” she says, voice just a little pleading, just a little desperate. “I had something I neededyou to take care of. There just isn’t anyone else who can resolve this little problem, darling.” His cheeks heat up a little, even knowing that this is all an act, his cock twitching a little at the thought of dragging her out into the hall and fucking her until she bites at his shoulder to stifle her moans and comes until she’s limp against him and he has to carry her to a chaise lounge and re-enter the study with a little more curl in his hair than before.

“Now, then, I suppose there isn’t, is there?” he rasps, sliding his hand down and gripping her ass where everyone can see him, smirking up at her when she straightens. Her hands brace on the couch back on either side of his neck, and she bends down, her lipstick sticky against his mouth as she presses a kiss to his lips like he’s been making her wait all week for it.

He sets the glass down with a loud clunk and fists his fingers in her hair, mussing the fingerwave, fairly yanking her head to the side and kissing her back like he’s going to eat her heart out the moment they get in the car tonight. She moans into his mouth, her heat pressing closer to him, and he bites her lip hard enough that it’s going to swell.

“Say your goodnights, sweetheart,” he growls, and all of their eyes are on her as he stands, straightening his jacket and tie. “Gentlemen, it appears something’s come up. I’m afraid I’ll have to take my leave, if you all don’t mind.”

His voice implies that they’d better not mind.

They shake his hand, congratulate him on his marriage, congratulate him on his bride. They ask when the kids are coming, laughing like it’s funny, and they imply rather heavily that Jason and his lovely wife should come back for the next negotiation meeting in a few weeks.

“We’d love to work with you,” they say, and Jason knows why- they see him as one of them, now. They see him and his trophy wife, and they see him as someone they can manipulate into becoming just like they are.

They see his assets, Stephanie now among them, and Jason, it seems, has finally tipped the scales just enough in his favor to be invited to join their little country club of corruption.

Stephanie’s waiting by the car, Vivian Maurice standing next to her and beaming up at her dazedly, and Jason spares a smile for Vivian before he gets in the driver’s seat. She’s always been nice, that one, and he knows- she’s not the kind of mob princess he’s come across before. Vivian Maurice is an Angel of Yore, the kind of woman Al Capone would have married, the kind of saintly patience and grace and kindness that would make a sinner feel like he could have a taste of heaven for just that long before he was damned to an eternity in hell.

Stephanie kisses Vivian before she gets in the car, pretending to aim for her cheek but hitting her square on her coral frosted lips and stroking a finger down the outside of her cheek as she folds herself down into the passenger’s seat. She rolls down the window, shouting at Vivian that she really must call Effie up for a lunch date, some time soon, and Jason drives away laughing only slightly quieter than the wind in their ears.

“It’s gonna take months to topple all that bullshit we uncovered tonight on that USB and in that meeting,” he says, turning the car into a drive through and ordering fries and milkshakes, and Stephanie just leans back in her seat and nods.

“I know.”

“But we’re in,” he turns to her, grinning at her in the low light of the neon sign and waiting for the worker to bag up their order. “We made it in.”

“I know,” she repeats, her smile a little sunshine in the darkness, and her fingernails scrape across the back of his neck as she pulls him into a kiss. It’s hot, wet and messy, a little sloppy and a little off kilter. Their teeth clack a little, once, and her breath tastes like butter mints, his like scotch. Her fingernails dig into the nape of his neck when she pulls back, nodding up at the cashier, who’s waiting patiently with an indulgent smile on her face, their bag of food and shakes beside her on the linoleum countertop.

Jason pays in cash, tips the cashier even though she protests, and hands the bag of food to Stephanie to hold safely as he pulls out of the parking lot. Her hand trails down his arm from the back of his neck to rest on his wrist. She squeezes once, twice, before retreating back to her side of the car.

“Take me home, Mr. Hood,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the leather. “You owe me a victory fuck for wearing these heels for four hours without tripping.” She can feel his smirk from all the way across the car.

“As you wish, Mrs. Hood,” he says, the sound of the engine speeding up in her ears and echoing along with the beat of her heart, the air in her lungs.

As you wish.

**Epilogue (Four Months Later)**

Word on the street is, Mama Gotham’s got a new baby girl. Purple and bright comebacks, high kicking her way around town with a right hook that’ll knock a full grown meta on their ass. She’s got a thigh band and a hood, a cape and an attitude, and Jason can feel it in his bones when he watches her work- Bruce isn’t very happy about this one. He wants to shove Baby in the corner, put her back in her suburban box, and pack her away as a hopeless case that he’s only saving from a coffin by suppressing.  He’s angry, and he’s made it very clear that he doesn’t approve of Jason bringing her into this life.

It’s too bad for Bruce that Mama Gotham’s new girl already goes by the name Mrs. Hood- it’s too bad Mama Gotham’s new girl already won over Robins 1, 2, and 3. It’s too bad Mama Gotham’s girl runs with Nightwing, Robin, and the Red Hood each night, kicking ass and taking names, throwing quips and breaking noses with her balled up fists and her enthusiasm. It’s too bad Mrs. Hood’s already halfway to taking down the Cavalcante empire with the Red Hood at her side.

It’s too bad Bruce doesn’t stand a chance of convincing this one to step down and step away from the life.

Or, hey- maybe it’s not too bad at all. Stephanie certainly thinks it’s not half bad, on her end. Waking up in a safe house, or maybe back in her apartment, doing homework. Getting her classes done and showing up at her boyfriend’s house (boyfriend, god damn, what a word), making waffles and playing cards and drawing up plans. Drinking peanut butter and chocolate milkshakes with cornflakes sprinkled in them at three in the morning on a rooftop sitting next to Nightwing, of all people. Finding herself wrapped up in Tamaranian weave when Kory shows up while she’s napping, or finding arrows in the laundry basket. (Ending up naked and squirming on Arsenal’s lap while Starfire (in costume) kisses her senseless and her boyfriend’s hands splay across her bare hips- priceless, she’s not even gonna pretend with this one.)

Reading books Robin drops off and sometimes being quick enough to catch him and pin him down on a rooftop for friendly conversation about a certain clone-boy that he’s clearly been eyeing up lately, or maybe about how Tim’s pretty obviously in love with Dick.

Spending a good chunk of time dismantling the Cavalcante family and trying to figure out who’s behind them, or having lunch dates with Vivian Maurice that sometimes end up with them sitting far too close and sharing a milkshake with two straws and one cherry- it’s all good, in Stephanie’s book. It’s not perfect, maybe, but it doesn’t need to be.

It doesn’t need to be without fights with Jason, without bickering with Bruce. It doesn’t need to be without taking a few hits on patrol, or losing a little ground to the Cavalcante enforcers. It doesn’t need to be perfect when it’s perfectly fine the way it is.

It’s all good.

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a rarepair fill for a big bang, hoping to inspire more and more Jay/Steph stories, because I <3 even Robins most of all. Thanks to magnarangs for beta-ing!


End file.
